Faded fine line infinity symbol joined to the word love in script on a wrist, shown in a close photograph.

Infinity symbol with love script on wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A healed tattoo of an infinity symbol with the word love written in cursive script at its right-hand loop, set on a wrist. The linework is thin and even, and the ink has faded to a pale grey tone against the skin. The design sits centred on the frame with plain skin around it and no other elements visible.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Infinity Love Script Wrist

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are nine the spring the Queen's ribbon-maker goes blind, and the palace sends for a girl from the salt flats because her hands are steady. The workshop above the tanneries smells of beeswax and wet wool. Old Hesketh sets a length of undyed silk in front of you and tells you to make the figure that lies on its side, the one the sea-clerks call the lazy eight.

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You make it wrong three times. The loop pinches, the crossing sits off-centre, and Hesketh unpicks each attempt with the blunt end of a bodkin without saying a word. On the fourth try you run the thread through twice, once for the left bowl and once for the right, and when you pull it tight the line seems to keep going past the place where your fingers stopped. Hesketh puts down his cup. "Now the word," he says. "Right-hand side, where the silk turns back. Small. Nobody reads a loop that shouts."

You stitch LOVE in the thinnest thread the shop owns, pale as breath on glass, and the letters seem to sink into the weave the moment the iron touches them. Hesketh laughs and says that is the point: the ribbons that last are the ones that stop being read and start being worn. The Queen wears yours to the spring fair, and you never see her face, only the lift of her wrist as she waves to the crowd.

Forty years on, you hold a faded ribbon in the same shop and cannot tell where the word ends and the silk begins. The loop still closes. That is all the workshop ever promised.